Boris Johnson set to win a clear majority in U.K. election, exit poll suggests
Photo via Financial Times via Wikimedia Commons
LONDON — Boris Johnson looked set Thursday to stay on as prime minister and win a huge majority in the British Parliament, according to an exit poll published as voting closed in what has been called the most important election in a generation.
A Conservative victory would mean that the United Kingdom is all but certain to finally leave the European Union on Jan. 31, more than three and a half years after the Brexit referendum in 2016. A divided and deadlocked Parliament had previously blocked Johnson’s withdrawal deal multiple times, prompting this election.
Maybe Time should have picked Corbyn.Report
No surprise there, may Corbyn’s antisemitic ass rot in agnostic hell. Brexit may have been Cameron’s baby but Corbyn was the midwife and he’s turning Labour into an left wing version of the GOP.Report
he’s turning Labour into an left wing version of the GOP.
I’m afraid that I need you to break that down for me.Report
Incoherent on policy, an inept populist leader, a split apart base. He and Trump are almost opposites in personal attributes but their effect on their parties is somewhat similar.Report
Okay, I guess that makes sense. But, until today, I had always seen Johnson as the “populist” and Corbyn as the person who was represented by the Certainly-Not-Populists.
See, for example, this one:
Now, if Trump hollows out the Republicans like Corbyn did, it makes a *HUGE* amount of sense to compare them to each other.
But without that hollowing out, I’m stuck comparing policy and comparing aesthetics.
And Corbyn ain’t anywhere near the first to come to mind when I start making those comparisons. Not yet, anyway.
Not yet, anyway.Report
You definitely don’t know Bojo enough to see that he and Trump share very little in common except for their odd hair. He’s a classic Tory elitist playing at being a buffoon whereas Trump has always been a bit of a buffoon desperately playing at being an elitist.Report
This is why we need “like” buttons.Report
I will cheerfully concede that.
But the whole “playing at being a buffoon” thing took off and it wasn’t only him that was running with that, but Labour as well.
To be quite honest, the first time that I’ve heard that he is *NOT* a buffoon is after the election where he gave the Tories the most seats since 1980-something.
Which makes me wonder.Report
Go read Andrew Sullivan over at NYMag, he’s been calling Boris on not being a buffoon for months now.
And yeah the parties tend to go down the paths their leaders take them: Labour into incoherent socialist wingdingism, the GOP into incoherent nativist nonsense.Report
I have been reliably informed that Andrew Sullivan’s insights ought to be avoided.
But I will take your word for it that his insights were there on Johnson beforehand.Report
*snorts* Being told someone’s insights need to be avoided typically makes me go check out their insights personally.Report
Playing at being a buffoon has been a view on Boris since he was mayor of London at least. That impression probably isn’t going to jump the pond outside of niche circles until he became a candidate to lead a major state.Report
That’s satire right? Do people still Kael unironically? Even Pauline Kael didn’t Kael unironically.Report
My take is always “this person is saying what they’re saying seriously!”
I mean, sure. To some extent, people are likely to say something like “nobody I know is saying X!” when, really, they live in a bubble. Seriously, the only people they know who have said anything close to X are people who are “domestic help”.
That said, we need to assume that the people who say things are saying them.
Otherwise lies madness.Report
UK Mirror story on the reaction from Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London, left-wing Labour icon, and democratic socialist
Ken Livingstone says it’s ‘the end’ for Jeremy Corbyn and blames ‘Jewish vote’
I don’t think their problems all started with Corbyn.Report
No, again like Trump, there needs to be an illness in the party for an actor like that to infect it.Report
It’s really odd to me how much is apparently being made of Corbyn’s antisemitism, when
1 we have decent indications that Labour voters are less antisemitic than Tory voters, and that specfically under Corbyn’s leadership that gap has widened considerably (by Labour voters getting much less antisemitic while Tories got only a bit less antisemitic)
https://imgur.com/a/HszNd64
2 Boris Johnson full on wrote a novel featuring the sinister Jewish cabal that controls the media
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/11/boris-johnsons-record-of-bigotry-antisemitism-and-far-right-politics-must-not-be-forgottenReport
Assuming all the numbers hold up, I’m more interested in seeing the consequences of the Scottish National Party winning 55 of 59 seats in Scotland.Report
Referendum 2.Report
The SNP won 56 seats in 2015. I don’t think anything happens. Scottish independence had a thin line to walk for success that included Labour needing SNP support following this election in exchange for a referendum. The independence movement wants to remain outside the Eurozone, while being accepted by the EU, whose members don’t want to give indirect support to other independence movements.
Northern Ireland on the other hand . . .Report
Projecting Labour’s fewest seats since 1935. There seems to be a broader problem on the centre- left in Western democracies following the Great Recession (possibly with the exception of Spain). Sometimes referred to as the alienation of the professional and working classes.
So I don’t know how much of this can be blamed on UK specific factors alone, but they appear to be (1) widespread Euro-skepticism that created an issue ripe for realignment; (2) an opposition leader that was not right for this moment; and (3) the pull of national parties that prevent Labour from forming a broader economic-based coalition.Report
Welp.
Report
I’ve seen a different read on that statement. He’s not necessarily stepping down as party leader until there’s another general election, which could be a while. One of his favorite potential replacements from the far left lost her seat tonight, so he’s going to have trouble stepping aside.Report
“He said the “responsible thing to do is not to walk away” and he would stay in post “until there has been someone elected to succeed me” which should be in the “early part of next year”.”
https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-jeremy-corbyn-to-stand-down-as-labour-leader-after-disastrous-night-11885159Report
It’s official. Boris has a majority.Report
The worst thing that happened to Labour recently was doing less bad in 2017 compared to expectations going in. That gave evidence to the widespread delusion amoungst the Momentum faction that Corbyn was good at this and deserved everyone’s support and the many many warnings they got that he was a milestone on Labour’s neck were waived off as the sour grapes of the almost-Tory Blairites. Meanwhile, the Tories eventually turfed the weak leader who failed that election and ended up renewed and stronger for the next match.
Even a couple days ago, I was hearing from Corbyn’s fans about how much ground they’d make up in the end and that the polls were lies.
One of the biggest questions now is whether Corbyn’s cult of personality remains in charge of Labour pursuing their goal of being a 100 seat ideologically pure party or if the defeat will marshal his opponents to manage a successful counter-revolution against them.Report